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Comment by dwc | Hacker News Reader

Read the top two answers (Bill Bliss, Robert Scoble), and it seems they're missing what I see as the most obvious and comprehensive answer. Bliss touches on it in passing, but not as a main theme...

The real reason MS doesn't get tablets is that it's a new product category, and MS pretty much always thinks in terms of how to extend who they are (Desktop) into any new market. XBox hardly counts; while it's a great product they did not have to define the market in any way, they moved in and made a solid product in a well defined market. With Kinect they really did something outrageously cool, but this isn't usual for them.

Apple, on the other hand, has shown the ability to look at niche markets and see the bigger picture, turning it mainstream. iPod, iPhone, iPad: all of these areas had existing companies with somewhat successful products, but definitely niche.

Sometimes MS reminds me of Xerox's lack of foresight with PARC.

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Scroble gave some insight into why this is the case.

MS is a bunch of different businesses (Windows, Office, etc). all operating at arms length (more or less). With that sort of structure, there's no room for revolutionary products, just incremental improvements on the existing business lines.

OK, there's great research being done on the monopoly products. Monopolies always do great research. But the company is not going to throw its weight behind new product lines.

IIRC, Apple is a lot more mobile, internally. It's nowhere near as polished as Microsoft (yeah, OSX looks better, but that's just a matter of aesthetic taste - something Apple has and MS doesn't), but it's much better at wild innovation.

I'm not sure what polished means, in this context. Do you mean that there aren't entrenched vested interests within the firm, or that people are asked/enjoy being flexible and moving around the product line?

I meant their products.

Apple has security flaws, a lack of backward compatibility, slow drivers, and so on. People in the know seem to say that Microsoft is streets ahead on engineering. But Apple picks their battles better, so their products always look solid.

I'm not in the know, but people say Apple is a lot more like a start-up. People will be yanked from one part of the company to another, to try and get new products off the ground. Resources get allocated by strategic goals (and executive whim), not left in productive (but possibly stale) areas.

I agree with your assessment of MS extending who they are in the marketplace but they did push the market on the Xbox, specifically with the Xbox Live service. Neither Sony or Nintendo have made significant strides in this area and Live has been on the Xbox since 2002.

True, though you could say the Dreamcast first put a toe in that water with its modem and Phantasy Star Online. But the original Xbox was a great step forward for gaming consoles: built-in hard drive, Ethernet port, dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming... uh, and the hilariously oversized controller: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/8/29/

Phantasy Star Online was so far ahead of its time - a good lesson about market timing there for sure.

Just a minor nitpick, although I agree with everything else.

dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming

Wasn't this done back with the early PS2/late PS1 controllers with analog sticks? I don't see how they're all that different from the first XBOX controller in terms of placement. I tend to prefer the PS controllers, so there may be some bias.

The PS1/PS2 had dual analog sticks, but I'm interested in the proper position part. Maybe it is a preference thing, as I went straight from the SNES to the first Xbox in console games, but the Xbox layout of dual sticks and d-pad seems better.

Your hands want to be vertically aligned, and with the PlayStation's left analog stick being lower, it makes FPS games and platformers more awkward to play. Even racing games feel harder on Sony platforms. The only games where their layout is superior are the Katamari Damacy games, where you only use the dual sticks.

Would love to see some research on this.

Kinect is not Microsoft's in-house technology. It is licensed from PrimeSense, an Israeli company: http://www.primesense.com/

The licensed some of the camera technology from there. Most of the body tracking software was done in-house.

That's only the hardware. The software was developed internally.

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